HINCHAS' PUSHCART NOMINATION 2019

IMMIGRANT CROUPIER by YAGO S. CURA

Immigrant Croupier
by Yago Cura


My great, great grandfather was a Lebanese ocean croupier.
Rolled the dice on Argentina as payout with my tatara abuela.
Debarking Buenos Aires, tongues calloused by Spanish knots,
they handsplained their way through racist-ass aduanas.

Teleported themselves to the middle of the country to secure dough.
Raised a family flanked by immense grass deserts of desiccant wind.
Without their gamble, my parents don’t ante on that freight ship’s hold.
They don’t overstay tourist visas, or buy a house in Brooklyn to fill with din.

If neither I nor my sister are born, the junta wins, and my parents lose.
The existence of this very poem becomes ensnared in red date stamps?
Relax, I make it to California because my tatara abuelos establish abuse
of odds as their hedge in the face of exile, erasure, and military gavels.

It is not luck which brings me to the brink of this continent
to commune with my predecessors, and polish the wilderness
of their bruise.